


Stupid Cupid

by uisceB



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: Awkward face-smashing that may or may not have been a kiss, Crack, F/F, Hijinks & Shenanigans, Humor, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-15
Updated: 2018-12-15
Packaged: 2019-09-19 17:08:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,227
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17005698
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/uisceB/pseuds/uisceB
Summary: If nothing else, Zari decided that Charlie kissing her was the least irritating thing she’d done since meeting her.





	Stupid Cupid

**Author's Note:**

> Um...Zarlie just stole my whole entire heart. Here's some crack featuring an unruly cupid and some smooching.

Time quakes were a bitch on the best of days but this recent influx of them had everyone onboard the _Waverider_ feeling just shy of mutinous. Gideon’s calculations had sent them on numerous wild goose chases for fugitives over the last week and each time they’d come up empty-handed. Whatever was on the loose was annoyingly crafty and causing more damage to the timeline than any of them had seen for months. 

Twice in the last few days, Zari had been tossed right out of bed in the middle of the night when the ship glanced off a raging time pocket, and just this morning, she’d nearly bitten straight through her own tongue when the donut she’d been about to bite into went flying from her hand to land with a splat against the far wall and she went tumbling out of her chair. 

Gideon’s disembodied voice cheerfully announced that they had just received critical damage to the main engine, and Sara sent Zari off to assess the damage while the rest of the team tried once again to figure out what the hell was causing all these quakes.

*

The damage done could be summed up pretty well with the words “we’re fucked” but Zari had the feeling Sara would want a more detailed assessment, so she poked around it for awhile. It wasn’t pretty. The engine was completely trashed from both outside and inside impact, sparking and crackling and squirting out the luminescent sludge she had once learned the hard way to avoid at all costs from its tangle of tubes and wires.

“Son of a bitch,” she mumbled, trying as gingerly as she could to straighten things out. It was times like these when she sorely missed Jax’s easy expertise with the ship. Fixing this was going to be a nightmare.

“Alright, Z?”

Zari glanced over her shoulder to see their newest and most irritating recruit leaning with one shoulder against the wall, nonchalantly munching on an apple. 

“Aren’t you supposed to be brainstorming with the A Team?” Zari asked, turning pointedly back to the engine.

“I’ve been dismissed on account of being a thorn in Mum’s side,” Charlie drawled.

“So you decided to come be a thorn in mine instead?”

“I’ve got fuck else to do. I could help though, if you like.”

Zari sighed, straightening up from the engine. “Unless you can shapeshift into a second functioning engine, I don’t think there’s a whole lot you can do,” she said. 

“Mm, yeah, I tried doing inanimate objects once,” Charlie said, examining the engine. “Nearly wound up a potted plant for the rest of my life.”

“Figures,” Zari muttered. 

“I could help do something else maybe,” Charlie offered.

“Like what?”

“I dunno. Start bashing things with a hammer and hope for the best?”

Zari threw her a look.

Charlie went back to her lean against the wall and shrugged. “Just trying to be useful.”

“Yeah, I’ll bet.”

Charlie cocked her head. “It’s really that hard for you to believe I want to help?” she asked.

To be honest, Zari was never totally sure what to believe about Charlie. She did seem a little less antagonistic these days ever since the great timeline disaster that had resulted in Zari being stuck as a cat for a stupid amount of time. Sometimes Zari could actually spend an hour or two with her without going completely insane. Sometimes even enjoyed it.

Charlie was still a pain in the ass though. Especially since she occasionally found the most awkward moments to tease Zari about the slip she’d made about Charlie always returning to Amaya’s form because she was hot. Thank god Charlie never delved further into it, but she never seemed to get tired of taunting her about it, and lately that taunting had been doing something to Zari’s pulse, making it jump all over the place and making her kind of sweaty, which was irritating.

“Honestly, I think I just need to work on it alone,” Zari told her. “It’s just gonna turn into too many cooks in the kitchen if we both try working on it at the same time.”

Charlie held her gaze for a moment then shrugged. “Alright. Guess I’ll just go and brace myself for the next bloody quake.”

Perfectly on fucking cue, the ship juddered under them again, and Zari was pitched backward against the opposite wall. The back of her head knocked against hard metal, sending painful stars stabbing from the back of her skull through her eyeballs, momentarily shattering her vision. She was distantly aware of something colliding into her from the front and smacking her in the face.

It took her a long moment after the quake finished its last shudder and after blinking the stars in her eyes away to realize that the thing that had smacked into her face, was Charlie’s face. Charlie’s face, which had at least had the sense to pull back a little, but was still only inches from her and seemed content to remain that way. 

She did that a lot. 

Zari was pretty sure she was looking at her cross-eyed.

“Uh…”

She cleared her throat and made a few movements to hint to Charlie that now was the time to remove her arms from either side of her, and definitely past time she stopped pressing her entire body into her. No matter how sort of pleasantly warm she was. And solid. Solid was kind of nice because Zari’s pulse had done that jumping thing again and it was good to have some kind of weight holding her down. But also bad because there was a good chance Charlie could feel that.

“Think you could…?” Zari began.

Leave it to a fucking time quake to have a time aftershock, of course—Zari was once again tipped back against the wall, and Charlie was once again smooshed into her. This time, her face didn’t quite smack against her like it had the last time, though. This time, there was a moment of separation, and then it more sort of pushed in at an angle.

Specifically, Charlie’s mouth smashed pretty spectacularly against her own.

They stayed in this odd and painful lip-lock for the entire five-second-long aftershock, and it took that full five seconds for Zari to come up with the sort of wild, far-fetched idea that maybe this wasn’t just an accidental face smash, but more of an intentional, if extremely clumsy, kiss.

And _that_ idea…well…that was a dumb and very unlikely idea.

But just in case…if she really thought about it…

If nothing else, Zari decided that Charlie kissing her was easily the least irritating thing she’d done since meeting her. Assuming that’s what this was.

Still, though. 

She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand as the aftershock ended and Charlie separated from her, and blinked at her in bewilderment. “The hell was that?” she demanded, more on instinct than anything else.

Charlie, if anything, looked just as shocked as she was. Her normal perma-smirk was nowhere to be seen, eyes wide and deer-in-headlights-ish and she shoved her hands deep into her pockets.

“Turbulence,” she muttered. “Your face got in the way of my fall.” She cleared her throat. “Thanks for that, I guess.”

“…Yeah. No problem,” Zari said warily, keeping her voice flat.

“I’d prefer smashing my face into your lips as opposed to smashing it into the wall is what I meant,” Charlie said. “You know. Better padding and all. Softer.”

She held her stare for a moment, then turned quickly and slouched off down the hall toward the bridge, stooping only to pick up her dropped apple core before vanishing around the corner. Zari watched her go, raising her hand to her mouth to make sure Charlie’s assault on her lips hadn’t chipped a tooth.

“If you ask me, she lingered on your face longer than strictly necessary,” came the familiarly cheerful disembodied female voice from the ceiling above.

Zari scowled and turned back to the engine. “Shut up, Gideon,” she mumbled.

*

Beyond a quick fumble here and there, romance hadn’t exactly been high on Zari’s list of priorities while living in the dystopian nightmare of 2042. It really wasn’t until she’d come aboard the _Waverider_ and read Mick’s somewhat stomach-turning sci-fi erotica that the subject of romance had come walloping unexpectedly back at her after what felt like forever. 

Not that she ever fantasized about the seven-foot-tall, three-breasted alien heroine of Mick’s novel, but reading it had, in some weird way, reintroduced her to the fact that romance actually existed, and she was, in fact, capable of feelings. After all, if _Mick Rory_ of all people could believe in romance, then it must be at least sort of plausible.

(And she wasn’t going to admit it to anyone out loud, but she might have gotten just a little misty-eyed at the end of the novel when Buck and his alien queen lived happily, if somewhat disgustingly, ever after).

 _This_ though? _Charlie?_ Zari didn’t even know _what_ to call this. She still wasn’t a hundred percent sure whether that face smash had really been a kiss or just an awkward my-lips-got-in-the-way-of-your-fall thing. Either way, Zari was currently dealing with an onslaught of opposing feelings regarding the idea of kissing Charlie, making it hard for her to figure out whether “romance” was one of them. 

For now, she was sticking with “not as annoying as other things Charlie has done” which was probably safest.

The more she pictured it though, the more she was having a hard time thinking there was anything accidental about it. After all, Zari herself had knocked into people before and easily managed to avoid mashing mouths with them. Charlie had to have turned her head and gone in at an angle in order to avoid nose-crunching and, awkward and painful as it was, there’d been some direction to it. Not _great_ direction, but it was a hard angle to just…happen to fall into without at least some effort.

It was weird, though, to think that Charlie would choose a time quake as an excuse to try to kiss her. Weird to think that Charlie would even _want_ to kiss her at all, given how rocky their start had been. Things were definitely a _little_ smoother these days—it had taken time, but with each day that had passed since Charlie first joined them, Zari had begun to see her more and more as _Charlie_ , and not just some creature with Amaya’s face. 

Between the accent, the clothes, the attitude, and the fact that Charlie considered downing an entire bottle of whiskey to be the equivalent of a well-balanced breakfast, despite sharing the same features, there was nothing _Amaya_ about her. In a way, Charlie had destroyed all illusions of Amaya just by existing.

And Zari was relieved. Because that had hurt for awhile in the beginning. Accidentally running into her in the halls and forgetting that that wasn’t Amaya had sent numerous confusing feelings flying at her all at once and it was honestly a relief now to be able see that face and immediately think _Charlie,_ not _Amaya._

It was also irritating as hell, though. Zari couldn’t remember meeting anyone even _half_ as grating as Charlie in her entire life. Zari didn’t like being called _love_ and _sweetheart,_ she didn’t like the mischievous glances Charlie sent her way, didn’t like that any time they had an argument, Charlie seemed to forget what personal bubbles were, or else just had no qualms about popping them. There were more than a few times in the beginning that Zari had had to make a _huge_ effort not to just up and slap her in the face to get her to back off.

Yeah, in comparison to all those things, the kiss or the face smash or whatever it had been was definitely the least unpleasant thing Charlie had managed to do since boarding the _Waverider._  

Didn’t mean Zari had to _like_ her, though.

*

“You two don’t like each other, right?” Sara asked her and Charlie abruptly as they joined the rest of the team on the bridge the following morning.

Zari might have sputtered, and decided to ignore the raised eyebrow she could practically feel from Charlie beside her. She got her composure together as quickly as possible and said flatly, “She tried to break my face one time, and got me turned into a cat.”

That wasn’t exactly an answer, but it seemed to work for Sara, who nodded with sharp satisfaction and pointed at John. “Perfect. You want to catch them up?” she prompted.

“Right, what we’ve got on our hands is a cupid,” he began.

“I’m sorry—a cupid?” Zari interrupted. “As in, naked baby that shoots arrows to make people fall in love with each other? _That’s_ what’s been causing all these time quakes?”

“Elusive, nasty little blighters,” John said darkly. 

To Zari’s surprise, Charlie nodded aggressively. “If you’re looking for real evil, you’ll find that in cupids,” she said. “I wouldn’t mind taking one down myself.”

“What happened to all your ‘protect the fugitives’ talk?” Zari asked.

“No one should go messing about and toying with something like love,” Charlie said seriously. “Cupids love mucking it up for mortals. They’re just shy of actual demons. They aren’t bound by time, either.”

“Right, and it seems this one’s been popping about through the timeline making all the wrong people go head over heels for one another,” John said.

“Wrong people falling in love, not banging it out with who they should, key historical figures aren’t being born, others are getting jealous out of nowhere and killing each other, yada yada,” Sara explained.

“Currently we’re in danger of losing…” Ray pulled up an intimidatingly long list of names, “eighty-seven of the world’s greatest scientists, musicians, leaders, writers…”

“And we need _you_ two to bag the cupid so _we_ can get a hold of his arrows and put the right people back together again,” Sara said.

Zari exchanged a look with Charlie who had one eyebrow arched extremely high. “Why do the two of _us_ have to bag him?” she ventured.

“Precautions, love,” John said. “See, cupids are nasty, vindictive trouble-makers who love nothing more than a messy drama. They’re drawn to anyone who has a spark of romantic love, or simple attraction, in them for another person. Now, the nicer ones—if we can call them that—are drawn to people who already have some attraction to one another and try to push them together—but the wicked ones are drawn to people who are already happily in a relationship, with the intent of swaying their affections toward others and causing infidelity, chaos, and sometimes a splash of murder. They think it’s hilarious. Now I’m not going near a cupid who might distract me from saving Dez—“

“—And I’m not going near a cupid who might mess with me and Ava,” Sara added.

“And no one will ever take me away from Nora,” Ray put in, puffing his chest out and then deflating a little when Sara gave him a look. “Save for…the Time Bureau,” he conceded.

“Well what about Mick?” Zari asked, trying her best not to sound desperate. “He’s not seeing anyone either, why can’t he do it?” 

“Garima,” Mick growled, scowling at her.

“Garima’s not real,” Zari argued, still kind of grossed out by that whole situation.

Mick’s face turned an angry purple color, but Sara put a restraining hand on his arm before he could retort. Or punch her in the face.

“What we need is two people without a spark of romantic love or attraction in them to get the job done,” John said.

“Exactly. Two people who aren’t in a relationship of any kind, either with each other or anyone else, and who don’t particularly like each other,” Sara said. “That way the cupid won’t see you as targets and won’t be able to distract you from the job.” She looked back and forth between them with her eyebrows raised critically. “That’s not going to be a problem, is it?”

Zari glanced at Charlie out of the corner of her eye, only to see that the perma-smirk had returned, all signs of awkwardness from the day before gone.

“Oh I dunno,” she said, cocking her head at Zari. “Think you can handle a mission without falling in love with me, Z?”

Zari rolled her eyes. “Yeah, I think I can manage that,” she muttered.

*

They’d opted to take the jump ship to the coordinates Gideon had provided, leaving the rest of the team on the _Waverider_ to map out where and when they’d need to go to mend all the important historical romances that had gone haywire.

Zari and Charlie sat in silence for a long time as they headed for their destination. That feeling of awkwardness was back, making her fidgety.

“I’m a better kisser than all that,” Charlie said abruptly.

Zari felt her pulse jump out of nowhere, pounding up somewhere at the base of her throat. “What?”

“That’s not how I do it,” Charlie said. She tapped her thumbs agitatedly on her knee, a frustrated frown on her face. “Kissing, I mean. I’m better at it than just head-butting someone in the mouth.”

Zari blinked slowly. “Okay,” she offered warily.

“Not that it matters,” Charlie said, shrugging tightly. “Just didn’t want you thinking what happened yesterday was something it wasn’t. You looked like maybe you thought it. But it wasn’t.”

Zari puzzled that out for a second. “You’re saying what happened yesterday _wasn’t_ you trying to kiss me,” she clarified carefully.

“Right. Just happened ‘cuz I was off-balance. Didn’t want you thinking there was anything else.”

Zari swallowed, feeling her pulse slide down from her throat and more into the chest region, more where it belonged, if a little unnecessarily heavy. “Well…good. I mean, I didn’t think it was a kiss anyway.”

“Good. ‘Cuz it wasn’t one.”

“Good. I didn’t want it to be.” She fidgeted. “Glad we cleared that up.”

“Right. Me too.” Charlie looked out the window as the jump ship landed outside a mansion holding a ridiculously lavish party in 1918, the cupid’s last-known whereabouts. “Now let’s go find this little bastard.”

*

The mansion was packed to the brim with what Zari had to believe were the 1918 equivalents of multi-millionaires wearing silly costumes and masks. For a second she tried to figure out if this was some kind of theme party before realizing there was a good chance this was more like a secret society swingers club.

AKA, heaven on earth for a cupid.

Also…pretty gross when a dude in a mask with a suggestively long nose tried chatting her up.

…And annoying when a woman who had opted to paint over her eyes with white glitter started getting handsy with Charlie.

Zari forced herself to ignore the way her blood seemed to come to a boil and how her head suddenly started to pound with some unknown ugly emotion, and pulled Charlie away from the woman and further into the crowd. She was glad Charlie went willingly.

“Think that’s him,” Charlie said, pointing through the crowd to a table decorated elaborately with dozens of white and red flowers. There was a figure perched on it, round and raw-looking with two sickly wings poking out of its shoulders, scouring the crowd for some choice targets.

Zari had expected that seeing a fat, winged baby holding a bow and quiver full of arrows in the middle of a party would be hilarious.

It was, until said fat baby called her a bitch and tried to jab her in the eye with the end of his bow when she made a grab for him.

*

“Slippery bugger, isn’t he?” Charlie observed as Zari retreated to the open bar where the shapeshifter had gotten a hold of a very expensive-looking bottle of whiskey.

“Yeah, no thanks to you,” Zari growled, rubbing at her eye. “Where the hell were you? I thought you were right behind me.”

“I…” Charlie halted up on whatever she was about to say, looking ruffled. “It just wasn’t good timing,” she settled on. “He saw me.”

“Yeah, he _saw me_ too,” Zari said, annoyed. “Did you happen to see where he flew off to after jabbing me in the eye?”

Charlie looked around, gaze catching on something far above them at the top of the staircase.

“Yeah,” she said, jerking her chin up. “And I think we’ve got another problem.”

Zari followed her gaze to find the cupid in all his fat naked glory, perched on tippy-toe on the bannister, with his bow string pulled back to his cheek and an arrow pointing directly at them.

“Motherfucker,” she managed to mumble before Charlie grabbed hold of her hand and pulled her out of the way just in time to avoid being shot through the heart by a stupid baby.

*

“So? Who is it then?” Charlie demanded as they ducked under the staircase and pressed themselves out of sight behind a giant potted plant.

“What are you talking about?” Zari asked, her pulse picking up pace again. She was going to blame that on the fact that they were hiding from a trigger-happy demonic infant.

“That little blighter had his arrow pointed _right_ at you,” Charlie said fiercely. “Means you’ve got some spark going for somebody or he never would’ve drawn back his bow. So who is it then? It’s not any of the lads, I can tell that much—harboring a leftover spark for Amaya, are you?”

Zari felt a little bit like she’d just been kicked in the gut. “The hell’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing, forget it,” Charlie muttered, glancing out between the leaves of the plant and taking a cautious step out. “Just—you’re obviously a target so we should, I dunno…regroup or…”

Whatever she’d been about to say got cut off when a crimson and gold arrow went hissing through the air and planted itself perfectly through her heart. She looked down at it protruding from her chest, then leveled her gaze up, wide-eyed, at Zari.

“Bollocks.”

*

“Okay, hold still.”

“I’m holding bloody still.”

“You’re twitching and you’re getting blood all over the controls, fucking hold still.”

Zari had managed to weasel through the crowd with Charlie slumped and bleeding against her and miraculously made it back to the jump ship without getting shot by the cupid. Outside, she could hear the cupid’s arrows _ping-_ ing off the metal roof of the jump ship, trying furiously to get in. After its next victim.

Well Zari refused to be its next victim.

So now came the hard part, pulling the stupid arrow out of Charlie’s chest.

“Since when are cupid’s arrows actually deadly?” Zari mumbled, wrapping her hand around the shaft of the arrow.

“Since they weren’t meant for anyone that’s not human, that’s when,” Charlie growled through gritted teeth. “Stupid wanker.”

“Well fuck you too.”

“Not _you, him._ Couldn’t even tell I wasn’t human, the stupid git— _FUCK!”_

“Sorry,” Zari said, placing the removed bloody arrow on the seat beside her. “I thought it’d be easier if I didn’t warn you.” She put her hand gently on Charlie’s shoulder. “You okay?”

Charlie shut her eyes and took several slow, steadying breaths and nodded, closing her hand over Zari’s. “Yeah, I’m fine, I’m good,” she breathed and Zari watched as the wound in her chest seemed to sew itself up until it looked like nothing had ever even happened. Charlie opened her eyes with a slow exhale, focusing them on Zari.

“That’s pretty cool,” Zari said. “I wouldn’t mind being able to self-heal like that.”

“Yeah, comes in handy.”

She was sort of…gazing up at her and her hand was still closed around Zari’s. Zari cleared her throat.

“You said, uh, cupids’ arrows are just meant for humans,” she ventured. “So…can I safely assume you haven’t done a one-eighty and suddenly fallen madly in love with me?”

Charlie blinked, looking startled, then let go of her hand and sat up, tugging her clothes into place. “Oh. Yeah.”

Zari waited for the inevitable follow-up jab and didn’t really know what to do when it never came.

“…Cool,” she said slowly. She scratched her ear. “Um. Listen, about what you asked before…no.”

“No?”

“No, I don’t still have…a spark…for Amaya.”

Charlie chewed on her lip. “But you did at one point,” she inferred.

Zari took a breath. “At one point,” she admitted, the first time she’d ever told anyone. “I mean, by the end of it, I really did just see her as a friend. She and Nate were—well, still are—my best friends and I was really happy for them. I got over Amaya, long before she went back to Zambesi. Seriously. No…feelings…at all, other than friendship.”

Charlie had what looked like the smallest hint of a smile in the corner of her mouth.

“And I don’t see her when I look at you,” Zari went on. “I mean, it kinda sucked at first, seeing her face on someone with your…temperament—“

“—Trust me, you weren’t subtle about your dislike.”

“—but, y’know. Time’s gone by and…you’re not awful.”

Charlie raised her eyebrows but looked genuinely amused. “Coming from you that’s practically a marriage proposal,” she said. “You sure you didn’t get hit by an arrow as well?”

Zari rolled her eyes and started to say something but was interrupted when the cupid landed heavily on the windshield of the jump ship, unhinged its jaw like a snake and roared at them, exposing a mouthful of rows upon rows of jagged teeth.

“Holy shit!” Zari exclaimed. “Are they supposed to do that?”

“They’re known to get a little pissy when they lose a mark,” Charlie said, but she looked pretty alarmed. “Never seen one do that before though.”

Still roaring at the top of its lungs, the cupid began firing volley after volley of arrows at them through the glass. To Zari’s alarm, it looked like it was making some headway; the glass was starting to chip. She turned to Charlie.

“Look, I don’t know if I’m a target, or you’re a target, or—both of us, maybe—but what do you say we take this guy down before he breaks the jump ship and strands us here forever,” she suggested.

Charlie looked apprehensive for a split second but then nodded sharply. “Right. He seems a bit on the warpath though, you haven’t got anything we can use to shield ourselves with, have you?”

Zari looked quickly around the jump ship and at the sad burlap bag John had enchanted for them to capture the cupid in. Beyond that, she wasn’t seeing a whole lot they could use to protect themselves.

“We could detach the metal tops of the side seats?” she suggested. “Use those as cover?”

“Could work,” Charlie said without much conviction. “One of us could go out shielded with the seat top and bait him while the other of us could sneak round behind him with the bag?”

It wasn’t a great plan, but Zari didn’t have any others. “Great. I’ll be the bait,” she said.

Charlie shook her head. “Nah, I should do it,” she said. “He’s already got a taste for me—cupids don’t like unfinished business.”

“But his arrows can kill you,” Zari argued, annoyed that Charlie had picked now of all times to be noble. “I should be the bait while you come around from behind and bag him. You’re safer that way.”

Charlie shook her head. “If I get shot, you can cart me back to the _Waverider_ and Gideon’ll do her thing,” she said. “If _you_ get shot, that bloody monster out there can manipulate your affections however he wants.”

“It’s better to have some fucked up emotions for awhile than getting shot full of arrows that can _kill you.”_

Charlie stepped forward, looking irritated. “No it isn’t.”

“It fucking is too!” Zari snapped, stepping forward as well. 

“Look, I know what I’m talking about, alright?” Charlie exclaimed, officially breaking through the personal bubble boundary and making Zari’s pulse skyrocket. “I get shot, it hurts like hell. You get shot…well, you shouldn’t be forced to love someone you really don’t. And he can do that to you.”

“That’s not—“

But Charlie had already ducked around her and pried the metal top of the side seats, holding it in front of herself like a shield. “Sorry, love,” she said, then kicked the door open and made a dash for the outside.

Cursing under her breath, Zari grabbed the bag and took off after the cupid and her stupid, stubborn shapeshifter. 

*

Ultimately, Charlie came out of the whole ordeal looking a lot like a pincushion. 

“Fucking told you,” Zari snapped once they’d made it back to the _Waverider_ and the rest of the team set about tugging no less than eight arrows from Charlie’s back.

Charlie was too busy biting her own arm to keep from cursing to respond.

*

Zari decided to pass on the following mission—or, _missions,_ plural—while half the team went from place to place shooting people with the captured cupid’s arrows to get history back on track.

Normally, the idea of shooting a bunch of lovesick idiots would’ve sounded fun to Zari, but she wasn’t super into the idea of being anywhere near those arrows again or messing around with anyone’s emotions.

So she decided to curl up in a comfy chair, eat an entire box of donuts, and sulk for awhile.

She grumbled a little when John decided to join her, pouring himself a glass of brandy.

“Our Charlie’s in deep with somebody,” he said off-handedly.

“What makes you say that?” she asked before she could think not to.

He raised his eyebrows at her. “Getting shot that many times at once?” he said. “Forget a spark, she’s got more like a bloody fire roaring in her. Cupid catnip, she was. Can’t believe she didn’t say something before we sent her off.”

“She said cupids’ arrows only work on humans,” Zari said. “She probably didn’t think she’d be a target.”

“Well sure, the _arrows_ only work on humans, but cupids themselves are drawn to _feeling_ , regardless of who it’s coming from,” John told her. “Stupid gits, too, they’ll shoot at wherever they see it. Killed off more than a few vampires and werewolves that way. Little known fact, actually: cupids are a greater threat to vampires than most skilled vampire hunters. See, vampires, they’ve got all these emotions all over the place and cupids are too bloody stupid to tell they aren’t humans and shoot them straight through the heart and _poof_ …”

Zari wasn’t all that interested in hearing about the warfare between cupids and vampires, but she nodded periodically as John laid it all out. He usually wasn’t this talkative so Zari decided to let him go on because it was kind of nice to see him open up. She suspected it had more to do with him being excited to have finally caught a cupid than him wanting to actually bond with her, but it was a start.

When he finally wound down, Zari asked, as carelessly as she could, “So…if that’s all true about Charlie having a spark…who do you think she’s…into?”

John shot her a look. “Please don’t tell me you’re that bloody stupid,” he said

*

She found Charlie in the game room, sunk low into the cushions of the couch with her legs splayed up against the back of it.

“Scoot,” Zari said.

Charlie just lifted an eyebrow at her.

“Seriously, scoot over, I wanna talk.”

Making a great show of being inconvenienced, Charlie swung her legs off the back of the couch and sat up like a normal person, scooting over enough to give Zari room to sit down.

Zari hesitated, realizing that while yes, she did want to talk, she wasn’t actually sure what to say. She went for the easiest. “How’s your back doing?”

“Well all the gaping holes closed themselves up a few hours ago,” Charlie said dryly. “Still bloody sore though.”

“Mm.” Zari flicked at a piece of lint on the cushion. “So...why’d you come with me? On the mission, I mean.”

Charlie cocked her head curiously at her.

“John said…he said you…had a spark,” Zari said haltingly. “For someone. I mean you had to’ve known that’d make you a target.”

“Well I wasn’t about to let you go do battle with a cupid all on your own, was I,” Charlie said defensively. “And anyway, you’re not so innocent—the cupid absolutely aimed at you first. You’ve got a spark of your own.”

“Yeah,” Zari said, doing her best to not chicken out at the last second here. She took a deep breath. “Yeah I do.”

Charlie’s jaw twitched and she looked uncertain. “And it’s not for Amaya.”

“It’s not for Amaya.”

“And it’s not for any of the lads.”

“Yeah, the…lads…aren’t really my thing.”

“Not Sara, I’m assuming.”

“She’s basically my mom now, so no, definitely not.”

“And you’re not into AI’s, I’m hoping?”

“What, Gideon? Gideon’s a shameless flirt and kind of a perv, but she’s also a disembodied voice so…no.”

“I guess that leaves one other person then.”

“Yeah I guess it does.”

Charlie licked her lips. “It’s Gary, isn’t it.”

Zari had a stunned moment of silence before she saw Charlie’s lips twitch up into a teasing grin. It was kind of like watching the sun burst out from behind a bunch of clouds and Zari was laughing before she’d even realized what happened.

“Yeah,” she snorted. “Yeah, it’s Gary, you caught me.”

“Thought so.” Charlie’s grin widened and she scooted in closer to Zari, resting her elbow on the back of the couch and leaning her cheek on her knuckles. She wasn’t _quite_ in the popping-the-personal-bubble range, but she was pretty close, and Zari…thought popping that bubble would be kind of a great idea right now. So she scooted a little closer as well, leaning her arm on the back of the couch so they were elbow to elbow, and knee to knee.

“So…does this mean you really were trying to kiss me yesterday during that time quake?” Zari asked.

“Honestly? No,” Charlie laughed. “I mean, alright, I…lingered…”

“You definitely lingered.”

“…but it really was a fluke face smash in the beginning.”

“That’s romantic. I guess I should be grateful that isn’t how you actually kiss.” She cocked her head playfully. “I’m assuming it isn’t, anyway.”

Charlie’s gaze fell seemingly automatically to her lips and Zari’s pulse was suddenly in her throat again. And…all over. 

“No,” Charlie said with teasing arch of her brow. “Definitely not.”

Zari flinched a little as Charlie slid her hand up to cup the back of her neck, nerves unexpectedly grabbing hold of her. Charlie lifted her gaze back up to her eyes in a quick check that this was okay, thumb brushing softly at the corner of Zari’s jaw.

Zari hesitated for just a second to try to rein in her nerves, then leaned forward in answer to the question in her eyes. Charlie met her halfway, lips pressing softly to hers, fingers curling against the back of her neck to pull her in deeper.

And…alright, this was kind of heavenly. Better than getting her face smacked into, in any case. Charlie’s lips moving against hers were gentle but firm, and so _warm_ , and the way her fingers were curling into the hair at the back of her neck sort of made Zari want to start purring like that stupid cat she’d been turned into weeks ago. She pressed in closer, kissing her with a little more fervor which Charlie seemed only too happy to match. The way Charlie kissed was easy and delicious and Zari felt warm sparks of desire rolling through her entire body, teasing an involuntary sound of pleasure out of her.

She was just considering whether it’d be really pushing things too quickly if she just went ahead and straddled Charlie’s lap when Sara’s voice crackled over the intercom with an order for their resident shapeshifter to meet her and John on the bridge for some magical…something or other.

Charlie grunted in annoyance as Zari pulled back. “We could pretend we didn’t hear her,” she whined.

“We could, and then she’d send the whole team looking for us,” Zari said. “So unless you want a captain, a warlock, a pyromaniac and a total prude of a nerd barging in on us…”

“Yeah, yeah, alright,” Charlie muttered, getting somewhat clumsily to her feet. She smoothed down her clothes and raised an eyebrow at Zari. “I’m not done with you, though.”

“I sure hope not.”

Charlie, looking pretty pleased with herself, pranced out the door to go see what the newest emergency was.

“Well that looked much more enjoyable than last time,” came the familiarly cheerful disembodied female voice from above.

Zari leaned back against the cushions with a contented sigh, too giddy to be weirded out by the _way_ overly nosy, and _definitely_ too-pervy-for-her-own-good AI.

“Shut up, Gideon.”


End file.
